Larssen
Member
+99|1857

uziq wrote:

if america being the world's biggest covid failure, by a yuuuge margin, is not enough of a wake-up call that trump isn't fit for office, then i fully believe that america is locked into a process of freudian death drive-esque self-annihilation, and will only be able to rid itself of the destructive energies once the grim process has been seen through to the end. maybe like a drug addict they've got to hit their metaphorical rock bottom before they can assess the true toll and rebuild.
It's an interesting case study as I don't think something like that happened before. i.e. how a functional western democracy could really slide into disrepair, actually enabled/sanctioned by its electorate. It does cause concern because the seeming stability of proper democratic governance could be its undoing if the system plunges into a cycle of hostility, cynicism and distrustfulness among the general public.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-09-01 06:24:33)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

In all fairness, Larssen, we've (USA) been to pretty dark places before. Slavery, civil war, genocide, global pandemics (with anti-maskers), world wars, and the threat of global thermonuclear war, protests, riots, violence, and political corruption. I don't think the American government suddenly became a #*&-show out of nowhere. Doesn't mean I like or am excusing where we're at now.

Again (and probably a different article this time),

In 1981 a ‘task force’ intimidated voters at the polls. Will Republicans revert to their old tactics?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 … ld-tactics

long snippet wrote:

Donald Trump has threatened to send in poll watchers to monitor voting on 3 November, but is the party capable of such a threat?

Ed Pilkington
Ed Pilkington
@edpilkington
Mon 24 Aug 2020 08.00 EDT

583
“Warning” the posters stated in big red letters. “This area is being patrolled by the National Ballot Security Task Force. It is a crime to falsify a ballot.”

There was no such task force in existence – it was the fictionalised creation of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Top conservative strategists built it from scratch, inventing a private vigilante squad of 200 off-duty police officers and private security guards. They carried visible firearms, wore armbands bearing the name of the “Task Force”, and were equipped with official-looking walkie-talkies.

The year was 1981, and a bitter race for the New Jersey governor’s seat was approaching. Republican organizers publicly claimed their plan would combat widespread Democratic cheating at the polls. In fact, they had a more sinister intention: suppress the vote in Democratic strongholds where African American and Latino voters were in the majority and the election might be tilted in favor of Republican Tom Kean.

So up went the posters in New Jersey’s majority-Black inner city precincts. As Rutgers University historian Mark Krasovic recorded, Black voters waiting in line were asked for their registration cards by the “officers”, then turned away. Some Latino voters were chased from the polling stations by the daunting patrolmen. Kean won the election by all of 1,800 votes.


How Republicans gutted the biggest voting rights victory in recent history
Read more
The 1981 “Task Force” amounted to one of the most egregious examples of election intimidation in America’s long history of voter suppression, but had a positive outcome. In the wake of those chilling events, the RNC was sued by the national and state Democratic parties. The case was settled out of court in 1982 at which point the RNC agreed to what was known as a consent decree.

Under its terms, the national Republican party pledged to abstain from poll watching unless it had obtained prior court approval. Party officials who broke that stipulation could be hauled before a federal judge and held in contempt.

For decades, the RNC was careful to avoid association with any measures that could be construed as intimidatory and to eschew coordination over poll watching with presidential campaigns, including Trump’s in 2016. But in 2018, the legal restrictions were lifted after the RNC persuaded a federal judge that it could be trusted not to return to the dark days of New Jersey in 1981.
Read, why would the party be so desperate to lift those constraints if it was determined to not fall back into old ways. Rest of the article carries on at some length.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
The Police usually roll out in force in the democrat areas, making sure their tail-lights are working, they don't have outstanding warrants etc.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

What's even better is that the police do that to people year around anyway. Like holding a black person at an extremely uncomfortable traffic stop for 45 minutes before making up some nonsense about a flickering license plate lamp or whatever.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
it’s funny that dilbert acknowledges voter suppression is a thing but won’t name the most salient and significant fact about it: that it’s RACE-based and those ‘democratic’ districts are mostly poor hispanic and african-american areas.

instead he comes out with claptrap about lazy blacks not going to the polls, or being led astray easily to vote for kanye west and kim kardashian bla bla.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I have no clue what kind of Australia dynamic is going on here, but I'm pretty sure Dilbert would feel more at home at a Trumper BBQ than a Democrat cookout.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I could fire some of these off in reply to the next Trump meme in my personal email but it honestly feels like shouting into the void. At least sometimes the void will sit on its thumbs for awhile before sending the next one.

I will express some discontent in the way electoral votes are portioned out. Low population states with few electoral votes, but a higher representation of their population, still feel like they are passed over in favor of the prize. High population states with many electoral votes, but a lower representation of their population, justly feel like they are being cheated.

I don't have a perfect solution in mind, but perhaps the office can be drained of some of the power it's been especially piling onto the dragon's hoard for decades so that presidential election results have less potential for cataclysmic terms.

Anyway, if Trump loses, I doubt his departure or retirement will be anything remotely graceful.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
to reverse the trend towards executive power and its aggrandizement, you have to get rid of your mitch mccconnells and william barrs, too.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Obviously not what you meant, but I can't exactly exert much voter pressure on those two names. The turtle-man holds a Kentuckian office, and Barr is an appointed lapdog who no WA senator voted Yea on. Background: in 2016, Sanders stormed the WA Dem caucuses, but lost 52-47% to Clinton in the primary. Clinton won by 18% in the election here, taking 8 electoral votes.

I do feel like saying "my state did its part" isn't enough, though I'm not sure what to do about that. Becoming a social media activist seems like a waste of time, and I don't think I'm a very good writer.

One of my block neighbors has one of these shoddy things hanging around.

https://i.imgur.com/Z2l9yJy.png
So what were the last four years?
DesertFox-
The very model of a modern major general
+794|6655|United States of America
I had a similar thought as I guy I used to work with who is a cop and allegedly one of those thinking conservatives was full-throatedly endorsing Trump 2020 as the Fraternal Organization of Police endorsed him. It just does cement in my head that even these times they distance themselves from Trump, they don't really care, but it's just performative for their own skin.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

those ‘democratic’ districts are mostly poor hispanic and african-american areas.
Isn't that just a bit racist?
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
are you fucking retarded? no it isn’t racist to observe that wealth correlates with race (and gender, historically). that’s the basis of the entire civil rights movement: freedom and equality of opportunity, economic freedom, as well as literal freedom from oppression. african-americans are disproportionately poorer than white americans (and to this statistic you only have the ‘hurr durr slavery ended years ago’ cant). what IS racist is you suggesting that african-americans occupy the lower rungs of society out of some 'genetic' inferiority or 'natural' state of things, beneath the white man; what IS racist is your sniggering insinuations that the 'blacks can't help themselves'.

furthermore nothing in my statement said ALL hispanic and african-american districts are poor. i said voter suppression targets the poor ones. that’s because new immigrants or the working-poor typically don’t have, for example, passports and photocard identification (which trump is trying to use). there are any number of factors that make it easier to discourage poor voters from going to the polls like, yes, encouraging a heavy security/police presence which acts as de facto intimidation among non-white communities. your mentioning of them 'annoying voters about their tail lights' is quaint. to many communities, the police are much more of an 'outside' threat than an irritating highway code violation and a ticket (though that would be enough of a problem if you're on the breadline).

you think you’re being clever, but you’re not.

Last edited by uziq (2020-09-05 03:16:37)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
https://i.imgur.com/and7CsQ.png
As someone blessed enough to get to work from home, it amazes me that people would be excited to risk their health back at the office. Especially since most bank admin stuff can be done virtually.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
there is something very sinister about the way trump is simultaneously downplaying the world's worst covid performance and also insisting on schools/universities and workplaces resuming office hours. hasn't every college campus and school to open early pretty much served as a perfect paradigm of how infections take off again?

a 28-year-old high school teacher died of covid in florida last week, iirc. totally preventable death.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
He is running a death cult. He wants people to prove their loyalty to him by risking their life. And a sizable part of the white community is apparently interested in doing so.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I suppose the Trump campaign sees it in their favor to, at all costs, encourage a brief illusion of a return to normality in the weeks leading up to the election. After all, he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and nobody would care.

Can definitely see this working with my Trumper and fence-sitting contacts. "Finally, high time, the country has to get back to work!" in the same breath BLM is criticized because, you know (aside form the idea that they're all violent rioters), there's a pandemic on!

On that note, even my "anti-authorian" bunch who shrink away from backing police brutality will double back with a rant on how one of their properties was damaged by a protest and how they should be taken out into a field and shot (also the proposed solution for people starting brushfires, as well as petty criminals to white-collar offenders). "Well, who would have the power to do that?" "I would! I'd even buy the bullets."

Suppose some of it may just be frustrated rhetorical waxing, but Well Thought /S …

(e: also realize I've been on a ranty line about these guys for awhile now, but it's an opportunity to vent)
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
The people who purposely start forest fires should be introduced to the Lord of Light
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gameofthrones/images/0/0d/The_night_is_dark_and_full_of_terrors.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160802075640
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Another idea I often see bandied about involves dumping them onto some stretch of federal land to fend for themselves. Like a Mad Max concentration camp. Just strange ideation to me.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Maybe put them all on an island to battle to the death.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jrTiPZUcbaM/UbXn3-1XioI/AAAAAAAAG3M/9Q1c5YERpNI/s1600/BATTLE+ROYALE+COVER.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
https://t.co/dvQvjOYBvU

jesus christ lmao
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

It's an ad. "Paid for by the North Carolina Republican Party," to rally the boys in red. I see "go register" all over the internet. I don't think "the state" sent those out, like I sometimes hear whenever something like this happens. Of course the irony (as the article notes) is seeing this after the president spoke out against mail-in ballots, after absentee voting. It's pretty funny to hear it spun as "oh well he was only against some absentee voting."

Also, it's a pretty common thing to get junk mailers masquerading as something they're not. I wouldn't actually put it past someone registering to vote to accidentally register as a member of the Republican Party.

Another irony in the Republican party using language like "are you going to let the Democrats silence you," after (for example) putting forth every effort to silence football players kneeling to protest police brutality, or demonizing peaceful protests.
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663

SuperJail Warden wrote:

He is running a death cult. He wants people to prove their loyalty to him by risking their life. And a sizable part of the white community is apparently interested in doing so.
Indeed, it does seem that a blood lord/demiurge is at play with human fate. Influencing leaders to bring to it blood and hearts. Same one that whispered into the dreams and hallucinations of Moctezuma, Hernán Cortés, and the rest like them. In the name of God... what words have been more abused? Vote for yourself this November.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Are You Going to Let the Democrats Silence Your Voice (TM), superior?
uziq
Member
+492|3422

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